As far as in-game lore and continuity is concerned, she was -never- lord of Avernus. During the early years of 1e when the details on the 9 Hells were pretty sparse she was listed as Lord of Avernus, but that was redacted as the plane and its denizens were more fully developed moving into 2e and 3e. 4e's cosmos is an entirely different continuity, but she's not a lord of Hell there either IIRC off the top of my head.

Tiamat, being an actual deity rather than a devil, doesn't have the same connection to the plane that seems to be intrinsic to being one of the Lords of the 9. Those beings that are or have been Lords of the 9 are either baatezu/devils or in rare cases like Baalzebul and the Hag Countess, are essentially warped and granted authority and connection to their layer by Asmodeus himself.

Gods since 2e have generally stayed out of the fiends' affairs and likewise, but Tiamat has had some pretty good relations with various actual Lords of Avernus over time, and especially with some of the pit fiends of the Dark Eight (one of whom she seems to have spawned a child with).

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No, seriously...I think there was even an "in game" reason for her losing her seat.

She never had the seat to begin with :)

Shemeska the Marauder, King of the Crosstrade; voted #1 best Arcanaloth in Sigil two hundred years running by the people who know what's best for them; chant broker; prospective Sigil council member next election; and official travel agent for Chamada Holiday specials LLC.

See Dragons of Faerūn p.8, which explains that during the Battle of the Gods in -1,071 DR, the Untheric pantehon warred against the orc pantheon. Tiamat ambushed Gilgeam during Gilgeam's combat with Ilneval. Bahamut, in his Marduk aspect, sacrificed his own life to slay Tiamat thus saving Gilgeam. As a result, Bahamut ended up a celestial paragon in the Seven Heavens (as it was known before it became the House of the Triad at a much later date) and was banished from the Material Plane for centuries.

Tiamat also lost her divinity and was reduced in rank to the equivalent of an Archfiend. She was similarly bannished from the Material Plane until 1,346 DR when she finally managed to return to Unther in her aspect as the Dark Lady. Over the following dozen years she was able to attract enough followers to elevate her divine rank back up to demigod status.

Presumably, Tiamat spent a lot of time in the Nine Hells during the 2400 years between -1071 and 1346 DR. It is unclear whether she could even access her divine realm in Dragon Eyrie during that time period. She might have been "locked out" of her realm, having lost her divinity (though that is not clear). Maybe she was just slumming it in Avernus because she liked the place, and it was a good place to hide and lick her wounds. Or, more probably she made some sort of contract to guard Hell in exchange for a measure of power during her tenure as a greatly weakend archfiend. Another motivation is she may have sought refuge in Hell from rival gods such as Gilgeam (seeking vengeance for her attempted assassination of him) or maybe Null, the dragon god of death, who might have tried to collect her name for the dead book, seeing as she was slain in the Battle of the Gods, or any other countless enemies that she had made that might come gunning for her now that she was busted down to archfiend.

Page 41 of the Fiendish Codex 2, Tyrants of Hell explains that there are several soft borders between her realm in Dragon Eyrie and Avernus, the 1st layer of the Nine Hells, and one additional soft border between her realm in Dragon Eyrie and the city of Dis, on the 2nd layer of Hell. The Codex states also that Tiamat still keeps a powerful Aspect of her chromatic dragon form as a guard over the entrance to Dis.

There is nothing that precludes Tiamat from having had a presence in Avernus prior to -1071 DR. However, my bet is that she did not. My best guess is that Tiamat established her relationship with Hell as a condition of a pact between her and Dispater or Asmodeus to act as guardian of Avernus in exchange for sanctuary from her enemies beginning in -1,071 DR. Then, after she regained her divinity following 1,346 DR, she may have abandoned her role as guardian of Avernus. Although, she obviously still maintains ties with the Hells including the soft borders between her realms in Dragon Eyrie and Avernus and that avatar that guards the entrance to Dis.

No, seriously...I think there was even an "in game" reason for her losing her seat.

She never had the seat to begin with :)

Monster Manual I, page 32 under the Tiamat entry; first sentence:

quote:Tiamat rules the first plane of the Nine Hells where she spawns all of evil dragonkind.

First book I ever bought for AD&D in 1978...I was only six.

Read my earlier post where I explained what the situation was regarding her status and how it changed after early 1e. Out-of-game she was Lord of Avernus in early 1e in the MM I for instance, but from 2e onwards she isn't and in-game has never been. Very early retcon in the game's history.

Shemeska the Marauder, King of the Crosstrade; voted #1 best Arcanaloth in Sigil two hundred years running by the people who know what's best for them; chant broker; prospective Sigil council member next election; and official travel agent for Chamada Holiday specials LLC.

Read my earlier post where I explained what the situation was regarding her status and how it changed after early 1e. Out-of-game she was Lord of Avernus in early 1e in the MM I for instance, but from 2e onwards she isn't and in-game has never been. Very early retcon in the game's history.

Was there a AD&D source that placed another in her place on the first level of hell?

I know in AD&D2 she wasn't any longer...but I could have sworn it wasn't until 1990 that I read anything about someone else ruling the first layer.

Read my earlier post where I explained what the situation was regarding her status and how it changed after early 1e. Out-of-game she was Lord of Avernus in early 1e in the MM I for instance, but from 2e onwards she isn't and in-game has never been. Very early retcon in the game's history.

Was there a AD&D source that placed another in her place on the first level of hell?

I know in AD&D2 she wasn't any longer...but I could have sworn it wasn't until 1990 that I read anything about someone else ruling the first layer.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it was retconned in 1e. It was first retconned IIRC in '91 in the MC:OP Appendix, with the prior 1e sources placing Tiamat there were fairly slim between the original MM and then (pretty much just the one classic Dragon article on the Hells in I think '83 and then '87 with the MotP).

Shemeska the Marauder, King of the Crosstrade; voted #1 best Arcanaloth in Sigil two hundred years running by the people who know what's best for them; chant broker; prospective Sigil council member next election; and official travel agent for Chamada Holiday specials LLC.

Was there a AD&D source that placed another in her place on the first level of hell?

I know in AD&D2 she wasn't any longer...but I could have sworn it wasn't until 1990 that I read anything about someone else ruling the first layer.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it was retconned in 1e. It was first retconned IIRC in '91 in the MC:OP Appendix, with the prior 1e sources placing Tiamat there were fairly slim between the original MM and then (pretty much just the one classic Dragon article on the Hells in I think '83 and then '87 with the MotP).

I read it in a very old Dragon Magasin from 1983. There was some information about the nine layers of hell and it said that she was ruler. I dont know in what year it became 2ed or AD&D, but it was knowledge to me!

I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that Dragonlance presented Tiamat as Chaotic Evil, the natural antithesis of Lawful Good Paladine. If this is (Dragonlance) canon, it suggests that Tiamat wouldn't be well suited as a tyrant in the Nine Hells.

I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that Dragonlance presented Tiamat as Chaotic Evil, the natural antithesis of Lawful Good Paladine. If this is (Dragonlance) canon, it suggests that Tiamat wouldn't be well suited as a tyrant in the Nine Hells.

Takhisis may sometimes take the form of a five-headed dragon, but she's not Tiamat.

I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that Dragonlance presented Tiamat as Chaotic Evil, the natural antithesis of Lawful Good Paladine. If this is (Dragonlance) canon, it suggests that Tiamat wouldn't be well suited as a tyrant in the Nine Hells.

Takhisis may sometimes take the form of a five-headed dragon, but she's not Tiamat.

The thing that causes HUGE amounts of confusion on this point is from the 1st Edition AD&D Manual of the Planes where Tiamat IS said to be Takhisis...

page 111:

quote:...As Takhisis in the world of Krynn, Tiamat has never let her followers know that there are other arch-devils or that there is a Nine Hells at all...

This caused me some great deal of grief for a long time...and then came along Tiamat coming "back" to the Forgotten Realms as "The Dark Lady" as well...

I finally decided that Tiamat is a "Great Old One" that long ago spawned all manner of non-related spawn that manifest in various worlds. That was easiest for me.

Takhisis may sometimes take the form of a five-headed dragon, but she's not Tiamat.

I'd always assumed Takhisis was Tiamat, known by a different name on Krynn. I'd never even considered the possibility they could be different entities, my bad.

In the 1e MotP they were described as the same individual, however in 2e they backed off of that and described them as different (but often conflated) gods, and gave Takhisis a domain in Hell distinct from Tiamat's. I don't think that 3e gave consideration to the topic since WotC didn't produce any DL material themselves, and likewise for 4e.

Shemeska the Marauder, King of the Crosstrade; voted #1 best Arcanaloth in Sigil two hundred years running by the people who know what's best for them; chant broker; prospective Sigil council member next election; and official travel agent for Chamada Holiday specials LLC.

I say now that they are not the same being at all...that they are simply early incarnations of a single being (from neither Faerun or Krynn) that eventually evolved into different entities in their respective worlds.

The best way to look at it is that Takhisis and Tiamat used to be the same god. But Tiamat's aspect in Krynn fragmented off and became separate. Now they are different gods. Their personal histories and personalities have diverged since the time of separation.

In this respect gods sometimes propagate like plants in the manner of grasses. Grasses send a runner (or stolon) which is kind of a horizontal stem, across the ground to a new location. The end of the runner puts down roots and a whole new plant/clump of grass grows from that spot. It may still be connected to the other clump by the stolon, but even if it gets severed, the new clump is a separate plant and can still thrive.

You hear 3 words used in connection to gods that describe degrees of identity: alias, aspect and fragment. An alias is a guise, when a god uses a pseudonym or even a stolen identity to gain worship from a different population of worshipers. An alias is basically the god role-playing, pretending to be a different god.

An aspect is more like a split personality. It's when the god takes the role very, very seriously, method acting to the extreme, perhaps even so much so that the aspect is like a different person.

A fragment is when the aspect splits off to become a separate god altogether. They used to be one, now they are different. Like an amoeba dividing in two. Or a colony declaring itself an independent nation.

Amoebas can reabsorb, or eat, their clones. And parent nations can re-conquer their rebel colonies. But once the separation takes place, it is often permanent.

This can happen when the god creates avatars. Avatars are, ostensibly, just vessels for the god's consciousness to fill. Gods can have multiple avatars walking around, acting independently, but telepathically linked to the central godhead. No different from a person playing a video game and switching between different characters. Gods can have lots of avatars, and the avatars can look very different from each other.

Sometimes the split personality walks off in its avatar and sets up house as a separate god. That's a fragment. It's unclear exactly how the splitting off happens, but it probably takes a worshiper base reaching a certain critical mass.

All this to say I think Takhisis and Paladine are fragments of Tiamat and Bahamut. They were originally avatars sent to Krynn to develop a worshiper base and tend to interests those gods had in Krynn. Then, with isolation and time, they fragmented and became independent gods in their own right.

Natives of Krynn tend towards extremely uninformed/disinterested ignorance (and naivette) when it comes to planar matters ... to them, if it's not on Krynn then it's someplace somewhere in the Abyss. Krynn and Abyss, that's about it. So I retract my earlier comment about Takhesis/Tiamat's home plane.